boot(8) - NetBSD Manual Pages

BOOT(8)              NetBSD/hp300 System Manager's Manual              BOOT(8)


NAME

     boot -- system bootstrapping procedures


DESCRIPTION

   Power fail and crash recovery
     Normally, the system will reboot itself at power-up or after crashes.  An
     automatic consistency check of the file systems will be performed, and
     unless this fails, the system will resume multi-user operations.

   Cold starts
     On an HP300, the boot procedure uses the boot ROM to load a boot program
     from an LIF format directory at the beginning of an attached disk.  The
     /usr/mdec directory contains a disk boot programs which should be placed
     in a new pack automatically by newfs(8) when the ``a'' partition file
     system on the pack is created.

     This boot program finds the corresponding file on the given device
     (netbsd by default), loads that file into memory, and starts the program
     at the entry address specified in the program header.

     The boot program can be interrupted by typing `^C' (ctrl-C).  This will
     force the boot program to interactively prompt for a system to boot.  If
     not interrupted, it will boot from the device from which the boot program
     itself was loaded.

     The file specifications used for an interactive boot are of the form:

           device(unit, minor)

     where device is the type of the device to be searched, unit is 8 * the
     HP-IB number plus the unit number of the disk or tape, and minor is the
     disk partition or tape file number.  Normal line editing characters can
     be used when typing the file specification.  Currently, ``rd'' and ``sd''
     are the only valid device specifiers.

     For example, to boot from the `a' file system of unit 0 on HP-IB 2, type
     `rd(16, 0)netbsd' to the boot prompt.  For tapes, the minor device number
     gives a file offset.

     In an emergency, the bootstrap methods described in the paper Installing
     4.3bsd on the HP300 can be used to boot from a distribution tape.


FILES

     /netbsd                system code
     /usr/mdec/bootrd       LIF format boot block
     /usr/mdec/installboot  program to install boot blocks


SEE ALSO

     halt(8), reboot(8), shutdown(8)

NetBSD 9.0                      April 19, 1994                      NetBSD 9.0